Secret Unleashed

coin, one calm the other short-fused. If I stuck around long enough, I wondered how else they might be different or alike.

To break the tension I said, “Only two?” I pointed a finger to Barton and Camille in turn, then held up a third finger in the air, aiming it at no one.

“Much like Juan Carlos, Tribunal Leader Arturo is protective of his privacy and opts not to keep a daytime aid.”

Translation: Arturo was going to be a poncy douche who thought humans were beneath him. He was going to love me. I might not be human, but human-hating vampires tended to dislike me more than most.

From the limited information I’d been given I now knew the West Coast Tribunal had a similar setup to ours. Two males and a female, and one of the males was probably a bit of a jackass.

Maybe it was bitter of me to make assumptions without having ever met them. I was becoming more like them with each passing day because I was learning to judge those I’d never met and to hold their failings against them.

Over time, I was turning into a vampire, even if my heartbeat said otherwise. And that scared the living hell out of me.

“Are we going to meet them now?” I crooked my fingers, beckoning Holden closer. When he took my hand in his, Ingrid’s expression was unchanged. She must have known what Sig wanted Holden to do.

His palm was cool and dry, an anchor keeping me grounded. As long as I was holding on to him, I was still me. I didn’t think Holden would like me nearly as much if I was the kind of vampire I worried I might become.

Right now he still liked me fine.

Barton and Camille whispered to each other, and for the first time since the three of them had arrived, Ingrid showed her annoyance at something.

“Would you two stop chittering like birds? If you have something to say, just come out and say it. You’re in the presence of a Tribunal leader and her consort. Your behavior is appalling.” She nodded to me, bowing with only her head. “Apologies. They’re young, still. Barely older than him.”

She’d indicated Holden, meaning these young servants were over two hundred years old. Yup, veritable babies at ten times my age.

“It’s just…” Camille turned away bashfully, unable to meet my eyes. “You look so much like—”

Ingrid—who’d just been insisting they speak up—stomped down hard on Camille’s foot, making the redhead cry out in surprise. “You’re speaking out of line. Enough.”

“I look like what?” I asked. “She was about to say something.” I focused my gaze on Camille. “What were you about to say?”

“Something it wasn’t her place to comment on,” Ingrid interrupted. “Come along now, please. Time for the introductions.”

Ingrid, who was the definition of unflappable, seemed downright flustered, her cheeks flushed from her apparent anger with Camille. It made me even more curious about what hadn’t been said, and I made a mental note to ask about it again at a more appropriate time.

Stupidly I was hoping Camille was talking about Brigit, and the mystery would end with my friend popping out of a closet somewhere shouting surprise, which would be something Brigit might find amusing. Brigit and I did look remarkably alike at a quick glance—long blonde hair, petite figures, similar facial features—and it was because of those similarities she had been killed.

My own mother hadn’t been able to tell us apart in the heat of the moment, and Brigit had paid the ultimate cost for Mercy’s mistake.

I swallowed the knot building in my throat and tried to shake off any thoughts of Brigit. I sought comfort from Holden by squeezing his hand a little harder, and he squeezed back in two short pulses before running his thumb over my skin.

“Lead the way,” I instructed Ingrid, trying to keep an authoritative tone in my voice.

We all wedged into an elevator, and in spite of the generous space I still felt like I was back in the coffin. My heart thumped, and I don’t think I’d ever been more grateful to be stuck in a small space with mostly humans. Holden would hear it, but he was accustomed to my pulse by now. The humans, as far as I was aware, couldn’t sense my heartbeat in spite of their vampire connections.

I needed to get myself in check before I met with the Tribunal to discuss Sig’s grand-spawn or whatever it was called when you go further down the lineage. If I concentrated hard enough and breathed deeply enough, I could slow my heartbeat right down. Not to a complete stop, of course, but the vampire blood meant I was able to get close. It wouldn’t fool anyone into thinking I was a vampire, but it would make my pounding pulse less of an issue.

The Tribunal here would already be aware of the fact I wasn’t a full-blooded vampire, but they also knew I’d been accepted by the East Coast Tribunal—voted in by the elders no less—and my position on the throne wasn’t in question. It wasn’t up to these vampires to decide if I belonged. I’d killed Daria, and by the rules of succession that made me the rightful leader in her place.

It wasn’t their approval I was seeking as much as a limited acceptance among them. If I was going to stay here, I wanted to keep things as cordial as possible, and I found it was sometimes difficult for vampires to play nice when they think of you as a human instead of one of them.

Since I couldn’t explain I wasn’t at all human and they were misunderstanding my werewolf pulse, the next easiest thing to do was to keep calm and focus on slowing my heartbeat down.

I snuggled myself into Holden’s side and rested my face against the cool curve of his neck, breathing his scent. It lacked the punchy thrill of lime I’d have gotten from Desmond, but there was still something soothing about it. It also pained me to admit that selling the story of him as my consort had been a clever decision. Otherwise it might have looked strange for me to stick my face in his personal bubble and start sniffing him.

Instead, I just appeared to be possessive of my man, and maybe inappropriately horny. Which currently wasn’t an issue at all, but I didn’t feel the need to explain that to strangers.

“You good?” he whispered, so quietly I might have missed it entirely in a larger space.

“Mmhmm.” I took another deep breath, letting my mind drift to thoughts of his hands running over my body and the way his cool skin could make mine so hot. When I opened my eyes and lifted my gaze to the bow of his mouth, I thought about the intoxicating taste of his kisses and the perfect agony of his bite.

I licked my lips. Maybe this wasn’t the best mental trail to wander down since it didn’t seem to be slowing my heartbeat in the least. He must have had an idea of what I was thinking because he released my hand and snaked an arm around my waist, pulling me hard against his side.

“Plenty of time to think about that later.” His eyes were darkening, losing their warm brown color in favor of a much deeper hue, working its way towards black.

Oops, he was getting hungry, and I was pretty convinced it wasn’t blood he wanted. He must have been able to smell my building arousal.

That was a douse of cold water on me if there’d ever been one. I wrenched myself out of his grasp without making a show of it, and instead of focusing on him I did the same mental exercise I used to calm down my wolf. Green forests, night sky, the thrill of a run, those thoughts would mellow me out faster than imagining a tumble in the sheets with a sexy vampire.

The elevator doors opened a moment later, revealing a dank, poorly lit corridor that reeked of moldy water. Some things didn’t change no matter what side of the country you were on, but at least they’d had the decency to add an elevator instead of relying on slippery stone steps.

Some of the tunnel walls had been patched with fresh concrete or stucco, and a few sections were supported with metal rebar. “What’s with the construction work?” I tried to sound disinterested, as I assumed most Tribunal leaders wouldn’t spend much time focusing on the chamber walls.

“The ground is often compromised by earthquakes,” Barton said. “We’ve moved as much of the night-to- night operations upstairs as we can, but tradition dictates certain things must take place underground.”

“You should have seen the mess we had to deal with in ’94 after the Northridge quake,” Camille added. “The cells were…well, it took us awhile to do the recovery.”